This invention relates to minimizing bio-security in an agricultural environment. More specifically this invention relates to using lighting devices to eliminate bacteria within an agricultural environment.
Over the past several decades agriculture in the United States has shifted from being an outdoor business with multiple family farms and cattle and livestock in pens or enclosed by fences outdoors to large indoor facilities where a maximum amount of cattle and livestock are housed. In particular agricultural buildings now have very complex systems for feeding, housing and addressing waste associated with the animals. These operations have become very complex and efficiencies in production have become major drivers in the marketplace.
One problem in the art is that with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands in the case of poultry, of animals within close proximity of one another, keeping a disease free environment is paramount to having a successful operation. In particular, often when visiting an agricultural facility, the owners of the facility will not allow individuals inside the facilities unless at least two weeks have passed since the last time an individual was in a different facility. Other precautions include having personnel go to a doctor for testing for certain bacteria to be cleared before being allowed inside of agricultural facility. Many facilities also require individuals to remove clothing, fully wash and use provided clean clothing before going through a facility. All of these measures are taken because if disease enters a facility thousands of cattle and livestock can be lost within a short period of time and entire flocks or herd must be condemned. This is not only detrimental to the animals, but costly to the operations managers of these facilities.
As agriculture has moved indoors, the lighting within these facilities has also become of great importance. Specifically, animals over years of evolution adapted to an environment that was naturally lighted by the sun. Lighting characteristics of light provided by the sun and artificial lighting are vastly different to one another and effects the animals within the agricultural facilities. In particular animals see and perceive light differently than humans and artificial lighting effects the animals differently than sunlight. Several studies have shown that, for example, poultry broilers that are exposed to artificial lighting emitting blue wavelength of light show increased growth in broilers whereas hens laying eggs exposed to red wavelength of light and red and blue programmed lighting will produce more eggs than typical incandescent light. See Green and Blue Monochromatic Lights Promote Growth and Development of Broiler via Stimulating Testosterone Secretion and Myofiber Growth, Cao et al., J A PPL POULT RES 2008, 17:211-218 and Light Spectrum Requirement for Maximizing Breeder Hen Turkeys Egg Production, El Halawani, Gobbles, Vol. 70 No. 4, June 2013.
This is important when creating lighting devices within the agricultural industry. In particular, some lighting devices such as LED lighting devices lend themselves to be able to produce monochromatic or very narrow, very specific wavelengths or colors of light. In fact, because of these properties, and because white light can be created as a result of a combination of different wavelengths of light, LED lighting assemblies can be created that can be used in association with a dimming device to produce a white light from a combination of colored LEDs and then certain strands or colors can be eliminated by using the dimming device to cause the light to change coloring as perceived by humans as seen in U.S. Ser. No. 12/824,215, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,643,308 entitled “Spectral Shift Control for Dimmable AC LED Lighting” to Grajcar; Ser. No. 13/050,910, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,596,804 entitled “Light Sources Adapted to Spectral Sensitivity of Diurnal Avians and Humans” to Grajcar; and Ser. No. 14/033,252 entitled “Light Sources Adapted to the Spectral Sensitivity of Diurnal Avians and Humans” to Grajcar; and Ser. No. 14/070,686 entitled “Light Sources Adapted to the Spectral Sensitivity of Diurnal Avians and Humans” to Grajcar each of which is incorporated in full herein.
While the appearance of the light perceived by humans in these instances go from white to a red, blue or other color, the fact remains that the white light in not white light and instead a combination of different narrow bands of wavelengths such as the blue and red bands. Thus, while a human perceives white, an animal or other living organism can detect and be effected by the individual components of the white lighting. These living organisms are not merely limited to the livestock or cattle within the agricultural facility, but also includes bacteria and other diseasing causing living organisms that are similarly effected by different wavelengths of light. In particular Molecular Mechanism of the Therapeutic Effect of Low-Intensity Laser Radiation, T. I. Karu, Lasers in the Life Sciences 2(1), 1988 pp. 53-74 show that bacteria grown at 632.8 nm shows a larger culture than other wavelengths of light and there is an understanding that 620 nm-630 nm wavelength lighting enhances e-coli growth. Conversely, UV to blue wavelength lighting or 400 nm-430 nm actually slowed and even inhibited bacterial growth.
Thus, a principle object of the present invention is to provide an artificial lighting device that both benefits the animal within the artificial environment while optimizing biosecurity.